So you’ve mastered and memorized all the different scales on the piano – what now? Here are some awesome musical ideas to try next, courtesy of Corona, CA teacher Milton J...

You’ve likely come a long way from your very first piano lesson, a nerve-wracking beginning to what is sure to be a lifelong love for these 88 keys of joy and wonder. Maybe it’s been a few lessons and you’ve finally completed a goal – you’ve mastered major and minor scales! From C major to Eb minor, you’ve got the fingerings, crosses, and two-hand synchronization down. So, what’s next? Here are five new steps you can take after your scales on the piano are committed to memory.

Interval Training For Your Ear with Familiar Tunes

Everyone has that favorite song they are dying to learn how to play on the piano. And there’s no time like the present to use that favorite song to start teaching your ear to listen for intervals and recreate them on the piano. This skill is fundamental to understanding how harmony functions within melodic and chordal procedures and is essential to your piano-playing development. And all of this can be achieved with Here Comes the Bride and The Simpsons theme song.

This video from Home Studio Essentials shows some popular songs and rhymes that are utilized for interval ear training:

Reading Sheet Music Using Favorite Songs

Have you ever passed through you favorite music store and seen the books of music featuring your favorite artists? Well, now’s the time to pick out one of those books and bring it with you to your lessons! You can also ask your teacher if they possess the songbooks in question, which may save you a step and some cash. These songs will provide a fun way to further introduce you to reading musical notation, and you will most likely start to make parallels between the intervals and scales on the piano you’ve learned and the melodies used in your favorite song.

Writing Musical Stories

The creative process is a wonderful thing to behold. It begets the great art we’ve enjoyed for centuries, and it allows us to create even more for ourselves and for others. Why not utilize that creative spirit in creating something of your own? One of the most liberating ways is to set original stories and/or poems to music. Whether this is set to scales or music you have already learned or original melodies altogether, this could be a great way to get those creative juices flowing. Ask your teacher about making this a project for you, and maybe you can collaborate with them or even your musical friends!

While fully orchestrated instead of merely on the piano, this example of “Pickles and the Bully” from Pickles’ Adventures can give you an idea of creating musical ideas set to a story:

Need For Speed

Now that you have all these scales memory-banked, what else can you do with them? Well, you can turn them into speed drills! One way is to target a specific note and try to get to that note as fast as possible. For example, take the five-finger scale and try only going one direction and see just how fast you can reach your target note. Pay no mind to initial mistakes for now, as long as you play that target note strong. With even more practice, those mistakes in the middle will disappear! From there, change it to playing as light as you can. The lighter you play, the faster you can play. So, try not to push at the notes. Instead, grab at the notes and let your fingers produce a full tone, not your arms. In no time, you’ll turn those scales into speed racers!

Nate Bosch of PianoLessons.com shows an example of this and other exercises here:

Back to the Blues

Did you know that some of our favorite classic songs are built around a blues scale? Take “Sunshine of Your Love” by Cream. That introduction scale is a blues scale. “Heartbreaker” by Led Zeppelin? Sure enough, a blues scale. How about on the piano? Blues scales are in some of the most beloved and popular jazz standards in America. Learning blues scales across all the keys you learned in your major and minor scales will open up more improvisational possibilities, enabling you to become an even better pianist!

Steve Nixon from freejazzlessons.com gives a great video tutorial with an accompanying sheet of blues scales here:

There you have it, budding pianists – five things to try out after you’ve mastered your first scales on the piano. Remember, with great talent comes great responsibility – the responsibility to have fun!